My Dearest Daughters: my sugar and my spice

It is so hard to believe you're 1 and 4 already, and before I know it I'll be thinking how it's crazy that you're 11 and 14 or 21 and 24. This time really is just a blink in time. One minute I want to freeze time and soak in every single baby girl moment and the next I'm so excited to see you start school, play sports, make that first lasting friend, attend those school dances (I'm sure your dad is not excited about that part), and just watch you grow into the beautiful, wonderful young women that I know you'll become. So here's a moment captured in time of the four year old Averiella and one year old Nakenzi.

1. First, I cannot say enough how much I LOVE watching the love grow between the two of you. When I found out Nakenzi was a girl the thing I was the most excited about was that you would both get to experience the wonderful bond of sisters. I'm sure brothers have a special bond too, but as one of three girls myself I know firsthand how incredibly special sisterhood is. You have a lifelong friend right there in your sister. She will be your greatest confident, your biggest supporter, your shoulder to cry on, your listening ear, the one that you know no matter what you can count on. She will also at times be the biggest thorn in your side. You'll be mad that she won't share or include you. But as my own father always said blood is thicker than water and when it comes down to it you'll see that no one picks on your sister but you of course.

2. Averi, you are four going on at least fourteen. You are not a big fit thrower thankfully but you definitely know how to bat those long lashes and manipulate your way to get what you want. You have a personality that people tend to love and don't forget. I always envision you doing something theatrical. I have never been a theaterical person, but singing, dancing, putting on a show, being the center of attention has been your forte since before you could walk and talk.

3. Kenzer girl, where your sister is all sugar you're all spice but I love it. Whereas, most of the time the big sister picks on the little sister, I must be an awful mother because I find it absolutely hilarious the way you just go and take what you want from your sister. You have known what you want from the moment you were born and you are one determine little stinker. I don't really see much standing in your way because you'll just mull it right over to get what you want. You definitely have a little bit of a temper and whereas I see Averi being my drama theatrical girl I see you being the athletic one. Possibly some aggressive sports to work out some of that anger and aggression you carry around. I'm not sure what you'll do in the future but I'm sure you'll do whatever you want to do because you are one headstrong little girl.
                                                            Moments of Sisterly Love

4. You both brighter our days everyday, even in those crankiest, whiney moments, which you both do have on occassion. I always wish I could freeze those "family dinner times" as Averi calls them and capture the laughter and amusement we get from watching the two of you. Raising the two of you has definitely become your father and mine's greatest journey and blessing. We can't wait to see how our story as your parents unfolds but it has without a doubt been an unbelieveable journey to this point. I pray everyday God keeps you safe and healthy and continues to watch over this crazy journey of parenthood that we embarked on four years ago.

Our generation's journey...hope for our children's futures

So as I look back over these past six months and all the anxiety that I went through in the journey to finally be here, in a home in a community we could raise our girls in, and I reflect on the many other things outside of my personal life from the media headlines, my friends' lives, the journey of American literature I travel through every year with my junior students, and the current state of our society in general, I've decided to pause to consider the yearly questions I always ask my students as we work our way through American literature about what is the American Dream? What does it mean to be an American? Are those two definitions different than they were a little over a decade ago.

Our country I feel currently lives in fear of where we are headed and what future awaits our children. As an article in Time Magazine pointed out last summer, the idea of the American Dream is at stake. Is the American Dream even still attainable? What is the idea of the American Dream? What does it take to achieve? These are questions I ask my eleventh graders every year as we begin our year long literature study through our nation's history. But these are questions all Americans are asking themselves right now. We want to believe in the dream that started our country, but our economy is struggling, we're told our education system is falling behind, the credit crunch and failing housing market is making it harder and harder for people to obtain and  maintain homeownership. Costs are going up and incomes are not going anywhere and that for those that have been lucky to maintain their jobs.

When I was eighteen I remember thinking how I was entering the big world of adulthood and all the hope and good things that the world out there held for my generation. Then one morning on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, that hope was marked with the reality of our vulnerability. That big world all of a sudden did not seem so safe, and this was the beginning of the hard times my generation would face. From their came the economic collapse and all of sudden the world of opportunity was suddenly not so bright. I had so many college graduate friends laid off in the last ten years. The housing market crashed and then not only was achieving the American Dream of owning a home threatened, some are struggling to hold onto the one they have. It's been a tough decade for my generation. This was not the world we imagined for ourselves when we were growing up, and the tragic morning of 12-14-12 happened. Tragedies unfortunately strike way too often but this one is definitely incredibly hard to process. For many of us we have children of our own that are close in age to those lost in the first grade classrooms on that tragic Friday. And now in an already unstable, sometimes unsettling world, our sense of security for our children in what is suppose to be one of the safest places for them has been shattered. What do we tell our children about this world we are raising them in? It is a scary place out there, but I don't believe hiding them from the world is the way to go. The violence, the hatred, the negativity, the lack of compromise- it all scares me. I want a brighter, hopeful future for my children.

Recently on yahoo, an article was posted with the annual doomsday clock analysis from world scientist. The clock is set at five to midnight, which midnight symbolically representing doomsday. What kind of hope does that give people of today? We've been at war for over a decade now. My high schoolers know very little about life before the War on Terror. This is all they've known. Just like when a team is winning and everyone is happy and when they're losing everyone is up in arms about what needs to be done to make them winners, our American society is at each other about everything from our economy, to the war overseas, to who should be in our elected positions, to who should own what guns. This is not what I envisioned for my future. America is disappointing me from our elected government to the morals of some of its people. I grew up believing this was the best place in the world to raise your children, and from working with children that still come here today to escape living situations many of us cannot even imagine, it is still one of the best places to raise your children I believe. But we are so much better than what we've been lately. America should be about the chance at incredible opportunties, not an entitlement. But the chance for those that want it and work for it.

I still believe in the promise of America and humanity.  I hate the negativity that surrounds our society and world today. There are still so many great people out there doing the right things. I want a world full of hope for my children, not one bleak with how we've destroyed God's vision for humanity. I feel that this is a future we owe our children and we need to move towards that rather than focusing on all the negative in our society and all the things that show we're going nowhere. But to overcome these events-9/11, global warming threats, war on terror, economic downfal, has become my generation's journey. But the journey is not over and we can overcome and we can end this journey in a positive way and offer a new beginning for our children. And one thing I think we can all agree on is this is a future we all want to see. We just need to agree on the path of how to get there.

As for me, I still believe in the American Dream. What do I feel it is? Just opportunity. Opportunity to pursue your heart's desires, and my heart's desires are filled right here. In my home with my family and all the other wonderful people that surround us. We have our good health, our careers, the house and SUV, and the greatest part of all-love and faith. Happiness is a choice. Maybe it's time America made that it's number one choice again.

                                     Our new home that we are so excited to raise our girls in

                                                Me and my girls enjoying a snow day

                                                            Our Averiella Lorenza

Our Nakenzi Grace

Nathan and I: 03/11/04 Nine years Monday

 

Onto a new chapter next week...

I can not believe that we are one week away from moving into our new house. It has been quite a process to get to this point. We are definitely excited but still hesitant. It has been an overwhelmingly stressful process. And we are still waiting on a few last minute things to fall into place. I'm just so ready to return to some kind of normalcy. I think my kids are desperately ready for us to return to some kind of normalcy. This moving and relocating has totally consumed our lives. At this point it's like we both go through the work day with our mind still on all the paperwork and things to do to make this transition, and then we get home and one of us is showing the house or returning phone calls that were received throughout the day on the house being avaliable for rent while the other one is on the phone with the lender or emailing the realtor about this or that. There's utilities to switch, change of address for all our bills, insurance changes for both houses, inspections and registrations, home warranties to shop for, cable crap to return; new dance, gymnastics, and school registrations to follow up on; prescriptions and shot records to get, ezpass to change,  and renters to screen and CYA paperwork out the wazo to worry about for renting out your house, and holy crap the list never ENDS!!!! And on top of that, what do you mean you forgot to pick our daughter up from daycare? We have to drive clear across the city with rush hour traffic to go back t get her! And what do you mean you just threw up on us while we were sleeping in our beds? Where did that credit card go that was suppose to be used to pay for your grad class? Oh, yeah, and remember that redbox movie we rented a week or so again. Well, wherever it's ended up I guess we own it now because we forgot to return it. What do you mean I didn't reserve movers for the 16th like I thought? The 14 th works better then. Fine by me let's get this over with!!!

So, Valentine's Day is going to be a big day in the Glenn house this year! We are finally moving into the new house we've been trying to get into for three and half years. Shortly after Averi was born we started to realize living in the city was awesome when it was just us but it wasnt' the place we wanted to raise kids. So October of 2009 was the first time we talked to a realtor. Who was a no call no show the first time because supposedly her tiolet overflowed. Should have taken that as a sign we were in for a long haul. That became our reality check to how much the housing market had crashed since we bought in 2006. I want to say at that time we were around $15000-20000 in the hole. So we said okay, Averi's just a baby we'll wait a year. We checked back the next year with a new realtor because the other one was just as unreliable. Same thing still around $15000 short. In January of 2012 we checked again. This time it looked like we were only off by $5000 so we decided to list it. So on June 11, 2012 we listed it for sale finally. And come the first of October at the end of the peak season for house buying we had had two showings. It was not looking good. The plan had been if it hadn't sold by November we'd take it off and list it again the following spring. But knowing that left us one last year to get out of it before Averi started school and with pretty much no interest in it, it was rather discouraging.  I've always been someone who sets her mind on something and I do it. I have ideas, I have visions, and that's the way I want it. And I will do anything I can to try to get it. I'm kind of a brat like that. Call it what you will it's just the way I am. And as much as I love Baltimore, I did not leave home and the wonderful place there to raise kids to raise my kids in inner Baltimore City. So the realtor put in our head the idea of renting out our house. Which is something Nate always talked about but I wasn't too crazy about the idea because I was afraid of the huge headache it could possibly be.

But that's the road we chose. It's been a little bumpy. But I'm not sure we know how to drive down a smooth road anyway. First, twice it looked like we couldn't get approved for a new mortgage while holding our current one. We tried me by myself since my name is not on this house, just Nate's. Nope I'm just a poor teacher with a very expensive car payment thanks to that wonderful Mazda story. We tried with both our names and at first they said no because they thought this mortgage was FHA. But then it turned it wasn't. And what do you know. We were approved and for a little bit more (like $75) than I wanted our new mortgage payment to be. So this was even better since the bank tends to approve you for a much larger amout than is usually your realistic limit. But now we had to have a 3.5% downpayment. Well we don't exactly have thousands of dollars laying around and we don't have family to go borrow or "gift" us thousands of dollars so we sold the only thing that was truly ours that we've both loved and hated to part with . We sold our silver bullet truck as we called it. And yes maybe it's just a truck. But when you've always had to buy everything with every dollar you've ever earned yourself, you have a huge appreciate for everything little thing that you can rightfully call yours. We came out here with a TV and damn microwave. We still have that TV and it took us a while but we finally parted with the microwave. So owning that truck meant a lot to us. So we painfully parted with it. And we had our thousands of dollars to go put our offer in the house. It took us a month from the time we found the house until we had the money. We were back at the house within in twenty four hours of selling the truck, ready to put in our offer. And so was someone else! Talk about that horrible knot of anxiety in your gut for the next twenty four hours. We put in a pretty aggressive offer and waited, praying they would choose our offer over the other one. It was in our number one area, on an acre of land, a huge deck that overlooked the yard, a huge finished basement with a playroom and Mommy/Daddy room, tons of storage and closest space, two bathrooms finally, and three bedrooms. This had to be our house. AHHH, the wait was so agonzing. And finally the call came and they took our offer!!! What a huge relief. Then began the next crazy process. The loan approval and finding renters to cover the mortgage on this house. I have to say I would recommend our lender to anyone looking to refinance or purchase. He was amazing. He took care of everything he promised and was easily accessible whenever I had questions. Seriously if you want a great lender in the Maryland area let me know. Heard from him today that our loan is good, ready to go. Just have to sign the papers on Thursday!

And now we're down to the one last hurdle. The one that keeps me awake at night. The one that leaves that knot of anxiety in my gut that never leaves. We still need renters. We have tons of interest so that's hopeful. I hope after we have the renters the anxiety will go away. And people keep asking, "Why are you renting?" "Aren't you worried someone will destroy your house?" "Not pay the rent?" " Sue you over something?" Yes, people,I am freaking out about all these things. Is this a good idea? Hell, I don't know. But the economy kind of went upside down in the last seven years and my kids are going to be grown if I wait for everyone else to get themselves together and the economy to rebound. Yes, we understand this is a huge risk. It could bite us in the butt big time but I've always felt like you do what you have to do when you have to do it. We weren't even thinking this this time last year when we put the house up for sale but everything's fallen into place now. It's a gamble but half the stuff Nate and I have done in our life together has been a  gamble. If I've learned anything you don't know how anything is going to work until you try it. You have to be willing to fail in order to succeed. We've waited over three years for this change and change can only occur sometimes when you push forward to make it happen. I pray everyday we get good people in here and renting this house out doesn't turn out to be a huge headache. I have faith. With every crazy choice, even the mistakes we've made, things have always worked out in the end.

I wanted to include some memories and pictures of our days on Boston Street in good ole Baltimore but I'm afraid I may have put some of my readers to sleep for now so I'll save that for another time. We're excited for this new family journey. I can't wait to watch my girls run around in that big backyard. Sometimes the dreams come true are the simple things.

All because two people fell in love...

We've seen the little home decor frames with the lines all because two people fell in love. And as I watched the love that flowed so strongly among my family last weekend at my sister's wedding, I asked myself because of which two people falling in love in the past made this all of our futures. Did it start with my Grandma and Grandpa Morgante and their fifty four years of marriage and four kids? With my Grandma and Grandpa Williams and their almost fifty years of marriage and six kids between them? Did it start with my parents who met on a blind date, saw each other a whole eight times over the span of a year and half because my dad was in the Marine Corp,  and then married. He  took my mom halfway across the country on a lifelong journey  that no one thought  would make it the first five years, much more the thirty two they're going to celebrate next month. I grew up believing in the love of a lifetime, the committment and strength of family, and that love is  everything. It is our strength, it is our weakness, it makes us laugh, it makes us cry, it gives us hope, it's there no matter what the world and life throws at us. And when you've found it, whether it's your sibling, parent, child,  spouse, or anyone else you hold it tight and never let go. I believe that love is the best way to honor the gift of life that God has given us. It is a gift that should be honored everyday.

And as I look at my parents and my grandparents, I am thankful everyday for such amazing people to have been placed in my life to show me the way. We lost one of my grandpas last summer and my other one has struggled for awhile now, and I always think how I hope I can look back on my life when I'm their age and feel that I did it. Just as they have. None of them are rolling in wealth which is sometimes what some thinks it means to "make it", and I know they had their moments of struggling with money and life just like the rest of us, but they kept their faith and they kept their love. They kept right on going no matter what life threw at them. And life threw some pretty nasty curves at times, but through it all they held strong. Life is hard, working for a living is hard, marriage is hard, raising kids is hard, but they all (my Grandma and Grandpa Williams, Grandma and Grandpa Morgante, and Mom and Dad) never gave up on each other and together showed not only me but I believe anyone that knows them that the love between two people can accomplish anything and that marriage can last.

My parents have been the constant guiding light in love and life. They really have been inspiration to all of us, and as I looked at my parents' growing family of 12 now, they might not think so but to be them at some point is really a dream so many of us hope to reach. And now that the three of us are married, I like to think my sisters and I got enough of their good strong genes and I know we married good men, that we all hopefully have the potential to follow in  their large footsteps. I know it s a long, tough road, but I'm sure every step down it is worth it.

Hello, 2013!

Well Christmas has come and gone. As well as 2012! And now here we are into 2013. Christmas break was okay, but unfortunately my girls were sick the WHOLE break. Ave came down with a fever Saturday and it didn't go away until Christmas day, and on that same day Kenz started with the fever. But her's didn't go away in three days so come day 6, which was after the weekend, I finally got her into the doctor. And it turned out that she had a double ear infection. On top of that I can see that she's cutting her molars. So a sick, tooth cutting Kenzi was kind of like having the colicky Kenzi back so by the end of the day yesterday when I was on our third or fourth day of her just crying constantly  when she wasn't sleeping, I actually felt ready to go back to work. The night before going back to work, I of course felt guilty that I was so ready to go back because my own children drove me crazy. Averi with this three year old sassy, fitting throwing attitude of hers of late and Kenzi with her constant crying. We went sledding a little but not much because we figured they probably shouldn't be out in the cold if they were sick, and once we got home we heard from the seller's bank and finally have a close date so we of course wanted to take advantage of time off so packed some more of the house on top of putting away the Christmas decorations and gifts and unpacking from PA, which then made me feel like we didn't do any fun family stuff. That's the way I've felt all school year. We barely squeezed in the Pumpkin Patch in October when we got the approval from the bank and started looking at houses. We never did any fun Christmas outings like Zoolights from last year because Nate had class every Saturday in December this year and we have to save every penny for that large down payment. But it'll all be fine because we're getting something so much better that we didn't even think was going to happen this year or possibly for years (I'll share that whole journey when we've finally closed on the house). Once we're moved and settled in, we won't be so overwhelmed and distracted. It just bothers me that I am so distracted from giving my girls all the attention they should have. I doon't feel like we've had time for our usual crazy Glenn fun,but we will again. It'll just be in our new home in the country verse Baltimore City.

But we did have a good visit with Nate's family. The girls love seeing their Grandma, Nana, Uncle Bob, Aunt Jody, and cousins. And as always, it's nice to have the few extra hands for help for a few days. And they got TONS of gifts from them and us, as well as Santa of course. And we still have one more Christmas to go. We leave in less than a week for my sister's wedding. Can't believe my little sister is finally getting married. Now that it's right around the corner, I'm getting pretty excited for the trip. It amazes me though how many people ask me the question, "oh, you're going" like I wouldn't be going to my sister's wedding!!! Yes, people, I don't care if she was getting married in Alaska on the worst possible day of the year (not sure when exactly that would be) but she's my sister and just like every other significant life event that has occurred since I moved out here I will still be there. She fretted so much about when to have it between my schedule, hers, my dad's, and my mom's family. I pretty much told her it's your day, have it when and where you want, and we'll be there. That's just what family does. You don't always have to like it but you just do it because they're family and it's what you do. Had to get the short vent in there. Too many things have occurred lately in different ways where it amazes me how people don't make the time or the effort.

                                                   Big timer walker in time for Christmas

                                                         Christmas morning at Nana's

                                                              Her new umbrella

                                                               My Christmas babies

                                                           Kenzi Grace enjoying the snow

Averiella snowtubing down Nana's hill

 

So yes, I'm wound a little tight lately (don't really expect that to go away until like April though), but I have good feeling about 2013. Starting it off with Tam's wedding and time with my family and then getting ready to move in to our new house seems like a good way to start it off to me. Here are some fun Christmas pics of the girls. There's just something about little kids that just brings the magic of Christmas back. I have to say Christmas with a three and one year old has to be one of the more enjoyable ages. Kenzi was definitely more of a partcipant this year than she was last year at six weeks. We're excited for the new year here at the Glenns and wish everyone else a great year with many blessings.